2004-2005 could be considered the beginning of the modern era in that it was the first school year with multiple NAQT events in the state that have stuck around. In the 04/05 year Tippecanoe and Solon both had events preceding the first NAQT State Championship. Solon capped that year off with, to date, the highest finish by an Ohio team at HSNCT with 4th place and the first Ohio player to finish top of the individual standings (Noah Rahman).

Interesting tidbit I found researching this: the first Ohio team to register for HSNCT was East Liverpool, but they must not have shown up because they are listed as 0-4 with 4 forfeits. St. John's Jesuit was the first to play and win an HSNCT game in 2001. https://www.naqt.com/stats/team-perform ... yoffs=true

My grasp of Ohio QB history isn't the strongest, particularly since I didn't play for one of the traditional quiz bowl powers that has a lot of institutional memory. I do think it's rough to come up with statewide "eras"...each region might have its own eras that exist independently of each other, only overlapping in a few circumstances. Regardless, here’s my best attempt:

-WHEELERSBURG (Scioto County) were inaugural OAC state champions in 1985 and repeated the feat in 1986. The Pirates also won the NAC in 1984.

-This "pre-history" period of the OAC continued until around 1992, when COPLEY, under the leadership of Sue Korosa, hosted its first OAC tournament and had its first runner-up finish at OAC State. Copley would go on to win three OAC state titles during the 1990s, and one could argue that the Copley Era never really ended...as with any great empire, its influence has just waxed and waned ever since. But for the sake of history and arbitrary distinctions, we'll move on to the next Great Power...

-BEAVERCREEK, which won OAC States in 2000 and 2001, thereby providing a convenient dividing line for the next period of Ohio QB. As far as I know, this crop of Beavers is generally viewed as one of the most balanced and dominant outfits of any era (although I acknowledge my bias as a denizen of the West Central region).

-As the Beavercreek era continued, Fisher Catholic and St. Charles Prep began a true ascent on the statewide scene...St. Charles (featuring Alex Connor!) won OAC States in 2003 and Fisher followed up with a title the next year. However, the real subplot was...

-THE TOSSUP-BONUS MACRO-ERA (NAQT RISING). Greg addresses most of the main points here: Solon (under coach Bob Weiser) and Tipp started hosting NAQT tournaments around this point in time, contributing to a paradigm shift that was reverberating through HS quiz bowl nationwide, Noah Rahman was a super-good player, Solon got cemented as one of the top powers in the Northeast if they weren't already. Of course, at the same time in the same region, you also had...

-GARFIELD HEIGHTS, which had been good since the early aughts, but enjoyed a run of sustained dominance in the second half of the decade under coach Bob Kilner. They won two OAC state crowns ('07, '08) and two NAQT ('06, '08). Of course, for me as a wee lad growing up in Dayton, the mid-2000s were all about...

To define my era (2005-2009), one has to look at Ike Jose, a first-ballot Ohio Hall of Famer and a very passionate dude. Ike was a key player in a lot of discussion surrounding the Format Wars, as he refused on principle to play any OAC events for Stow-Munroe Falls (at least this is my recollection). As is well-known, Ike made his high school career into sort of a barnstorming tour, which culminated in him winning ACF D-II Nats by himself as a high school senior. He was, by virtue of his high individual finishes at HSNCT and NSC, the next link in a chain that started with Noah Rahman and would continue with Sam Blizzard (and now Rohin Devanathan). Ike existed in his own corner of the universe, and therefore he wasn't the program or era-defining figure on the state level that Blizzard was. However, Ike is significant outside of his many accomplishments for anticipating an evolving era for tossup-bonus in Ohio, where the top teams and players frequently test themselves against wider competition and tougher question sets. In his prolific post-high school career, Ike has even directed his energy towards improving the pyramidality of OAC regionals and state, working with S. Wellstead et al. as a question writer for postseason tournaments.

The last era to date is indeed NORTHMONT'S, which probably began as early as 2010 or '11 with Brandon Williams's standout teams. The very good Hijazi/Jensen Sidney teams, which are among the most successfully specialized squads in recent memory, are also a branch off the Northmont tree, thanks to the coaching of Bolt alum Joe Czupryn.

That is a very solid post, Tyler! I think you covered the 2000's pretty well, especially considering the context you put in to some situations (the sentiment of Ike being a trailblazer of "playing the best, at the best tournaments, on the best questions", especially given his ambition, is pretty neat but it also makes a ton of sense given your framing.) Also, about Wheelersburg - they also won, I believe, some of the early titles for Columbus's In the Know television series. The other interesting thing is they are the only school I've ever read for where the superintendent of the district was a part of the entourage for the tournament (this an event put on by Greg @ Minford).

To interpolate some of my observations and what I generally understood to be true, in that 2005-2009 (maybe even up until 2012?) time period while there were some NAQT (and other TU/B) tournaments, there definitely weren't as many as we have seen pop-up and add to the circuit in the last three/four years. That may have influenced a lot of Ohio powers to play the NAQT tournaments in MI, KY, WV, and PA. I know that used to be a pretty common thing, although with more tournaments in Ohio I think we've seen more of the Buckeye state talent play in Ohio as opposed to out-of-state in recent years.

Seguing 2008/09 into the early 10's, we would be remiss to not mention the age of the small schools (I'd say roughly 2008-2014?). Ottawa Hills, who I understand was pretty darn good then (and would be by today's standards), won the '09 Small School title; Jarret Greene and South Range defended Ohio's crown in 2010; and Beachwood avenged their runner-up finish in '11 by winning the '12 Small School title. By the time I was playing, Ottawa Hills wasn't at many tournaments nor were they as strong, but even Beachwood and South Range - led by their respective duo's of Lizzie Bream + Ryan Reilly and Brianna Prislipsky + Christian Moore - were still top-10 teams statewide.

'11-'13: they aren't really iconic nor era-defining, but those two seasons saw the meteoric rise of two programs that either had not much experience in the game (Hawken) or had some experience in the game thanks to dedicated seniors that made them competitive, but were playing under an odd situation (Sycamore). The deal with Hawken, as far as I know, was it was basically four friends who liked quizbowl but wanted to do some damage and make a name for themselves. They finished second @ NAQT states in '12 and went 8-5 I believe at HSNCT. They had what looked like wicked good P-10-N stat lines. After they graduate, Hawken more/less stopped going to tournaments save for a few in the Cleveland area. Sycamore was a more peculiar situation. This group of kids wasn't the one that flaked out on OAC States, it was the ones previous to them. The other thing, and here is where my memory is somewhat jaded, IIRC they actually were not supposed to be playing *any* tournaments outside of the GMC. That obviously didn't stop them from playing at HSNCT twice (where they did rather well, too, lol) and tournaments across Ohio. I loved those guys, but it wasn't always the case. My sophomore year ('11-12), for some reason, was a rather acrimonious affair between Fisher and Sycamore, but my junior year we loved seeing each other at tournaments. Many a great memory, many a great game played between the two sides (they somehow managed to make the 2013 HSNCT bearable for me after my choke-performance in the afternoon after reaching 5-2). ...ANYWAYS, they were all in the class above me and when they graduated there was no more Sycamore to be seen. Sad stuff...

If there were one player not named Sam Blizzard, nor Northmont related I would say as being an era player for when I played, it would definitely have to go to Arjun Venkataraman from Dublin Scioto. Arjun and I enjoyed many great games against each other, be it NAQT States or Round 1 of the UK tournament (drove all that way to play them in round one... LOL), but he was one heck of a generalist and he was especially strong at science. The large reasoning behind my argument for a non-Sam player to be considered an era player (although not *the* era player, that's definitely Sam) for that time was that he was the impetus for Scioto (a school that never played quizbowl at all before he got there) to be more active in the circuit. If there were a "player tree" of forming the next generation of players, Arjun has probably done the most between the class I graduated in and a couple ones before that (Jarret Greene did more, I argue, but he graduated in '10.) The new face of Scioto quizbowl, Koh (along with his partner in crime Clark Smith), are both fantastic players in their own right, but my guess is that Arjun helped put Koh on the path to success when it comes to the ins and outs of the game, and in turn my guess is Koh did the same to Clark.

making them the only Ohio high school team to have won a "national championship.

We did have a couple Small-School National Champions.... South Range, Beachwood and Ottawa Hills...

Beachwood also won a small school title at History Bowl by default IIRC.

[strikethrough]In defense of Tyler, I think he put national champion in scare quotes for a reason. Obviously those three schools have national titles and eras of their own that we can't look past, but I think his framing of the Wheelersburg = only "national champion" as a trivia sentiment was rather innocuous and light-hearted. (Plus, it's NAC... and early NAC at that. I am glad that he brought it up, because that may have been the only national tournament then; ergo, Ohio's first national champion.)[/strikethrough]

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